This Generation Changed America – And We Don't Think It too Made a Great Contribution?

The
summer of 2014 has witnessed considerable attention paid to such
historical anniversaries as the seventieth commemoration of the D-Day
invasion in France and the fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer in
Mississippi during which college students supported the registration
of black voters sin the state. The courage of the soldiers who
stormed onto the beaches of Normandy helped pave the way for the
final defeat of Hitler’s Germany—although there is a tendency for
Americans to ignore the heavy casualties and contributions of the
Soviet Red Army on the Eastern Front. Borrowing a phrase from
journalist Tom Brokaw, America’s World War II veterans are often
referred to as “the Greatest Generation.” The heroism of the
Freedom Summer volunteers and the martyrdom of Andrew Goodman,
Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, and James Earl Chaney, murdered by
the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, is also receiving well due
recognition. However, there is little association of these
sacrifices with the baby boomers as a great generation who sought to
make America and the world a better place. Modern memory continues
to perceive the post-World War II baby boomers of the 1960s as
hippies interested in self-gratification, while their parents
struggled through the Great Depression and Second World War. While
there was certainly excess during the 1960s, this stereotypical
depiction tends to ignore the Civil Rights Movement; the fostering of
women’s liberation; the freedom struggles of blacks, Latino/as, and
Native Americans; the efforts to alleviate poverty; the formation of
an environmental ethic to save the planet; and the protests of many
young Americans to end a war of aggression in Southeast Asia pursued
by American foreign policymakers and bravely fought by other young
Americans in the jungles of Vietnam.

Extolling
the virtues of the baby boomers, of course, does not mean that we
need to disparage the efforts of their parents. My own father
dropped out of school during the Depression era to support his
family, and during World War II he was drafted and dispatched to the
European theater. After the war, he returned to his life in the
Texas Panhandle, struggling with his limited education to eke out a
living for his family. Similar to many in the “Greatest
Generation” exposed to the insecurities of depression and war, he
was conservative in his approach to life. Speaking out and
challenging the status quo might cost one a job, so many of the
heroic fighters of World War II became the silent generation that
characterized the consensus society. New Dealers, feminists, labor
leaders, civil rights workers, and reformers in general were depicted
as communists undermining the consensus in which prosperity would
eventually come to all Americans through capitalist expansion.

An
exception to the silent generation was African-American veterans who
fought against racism in Europe and were no longer inclined to accept
Jim Crow in the United States. This grassroots effort to topple
racism in the American South attracted the attention of many young
people who did not understand the reluctance of their parents to
confront the nation’s racial past and present. Inspired by the
example of the Civil Rights Movement, hundreds of predominantly white
college students volunteered to challenge Jim Crow through
registering blacks to vote and desegregating bus facilities. The
response to the black and white “Freedom Riders” included angry
mobs that overturned and burned buses while beating the
integrationists with clubs and baseball bats. The Klan threatened
participants in the 1964 Freedom Summer with violence, yet college
students were not intimidated. It is interesting today to ask
students how many would risk their lives by spending their summer
vacations in pursuit of expanding American democracy. Freedom Summer
resulted in considerable violence, and the deaths of Chaney, Goodman,
and Schwerner captivated the nation—especially the murder of the
two white students Goodman and Schwerner—and played an important
role in the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Upon
returning to their institutions of higher learning following
participation in the Civil Rights Movement, many college students
were no longer willing to quietly accept the university’s
participation in institutional racism and research to serve the
military-industrial complex. Mario Savio returned from his time in
the South to assume a leadership role in the Berkeley Free Speech
Movement. And increasingly college students, despite their draft
exempt status, were drawn to protest the Vietnam War. While much of
the antiwar activity was directed at the draft, whose primary victims
were minority groups and working-class youth, it should be noted that
protesters were also concerned about their responsibility as American
citizens for a government which was dropping napalm and cluster bombs
upon the Vietnamese people. There was much more to the
demonstrations than young people simply wanting to save their own
skins and opposed to serving their country. As Frances Wright
proclaimed in her 1828 Fourth of July address, patriotism is about
allegiance to the principles for which one’s nation stands and not
blindly following leaders. Many young men had the courage to face
prison or exile rather than submit to the draft, but most accepted
conscription even if they were in opposition to the war. After all,
draft resistance was often considerably difficult for one’s parents
who faced community censure for raising a cowardly son.

The
baby boomer generation was in reality hardly cowardly, fighting
bravely in a war whose purpose was unclear, and poorly trained young
recruits were often confronted with the difficult circumstance of
distinguishing friend from foe. The result of this draftee army with
an average age of nineteen was numerous atrocities such as the My Lai
Massacre. But in support of these soldiers who often felt abandoned
by their own nation, it is worth noting that after being caught by
surprise with the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968, the
American troops recaptured the cities of South Vietnam and
essentially achieved a military victory over the North Vietnamese
forces. The breakdown of discipline in the American military was
more a product of the final years in the conflict as the United
States was in the process of withdrawing from Southeast Asia, and few
wanted to be the last to die in Vietnam.

The
1960s were, of course, an age of dissent, and again one can point to
many extremes such as the bombing campaign conducted by the Weather
Underground faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
On the other hand, the arguments for participatory democracy made by
Tom Hayden in The
Port Huron Statement
place SDS well within the mainstream tradition of expanding American
democratic opportunities and possibilities. Organizations such as
the Black Panthers scared many white Americans with their guns and
revolutionary rhetoric, but they succeeded in drawing the nation’s
attention to problems of police brutality and economic inequality in
the inner cities of America. In addition, the illegal activities
pursued by the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover to destroy the Panthers and
antiwar movement demonstrated to Americans that they must remain ever
vigilant regarding government encroachment upon civil liberties.
Many of the protest groups in the 1960s and 1970s, however, were not
immune from the sexism of the larger American society Women in
organizations such as SDS were sometimes treated as second-class
citizens, demonstrating the need for a women’s movement. The
consciousness-raising of the 1960s continues to resonate today with
the issues of equal pay, reproductive rights, child care, violence
against women, and the representation of women in the political
process. And in terms of rights for gays, lesbians, and transgender
individuals, the country has recorded tremendous strides well beyond
the humble beginnings made by the baby boomers.

The
hippie movement continues to receive considerable ridicule, but it
should be noted that the hippie fascination with Native American
culture contributed to a national debate about how the U. S.
government treated and continues to treat indigenous people. It is
no accident that the 1960s produced such best-selling books as Dee
Brown’s Bury
My Heart at Wounded Knee
and Vine Deloria’s Custer
Died for Your Sins,
culminating in the challenges of the American Indian Movement to
policies of termination for tribal rights. Countercultural emphasis
upon nature and the environment fostered Earth Day and sparked an
awareness of how human activity impacts nature. Organizations such
as Greenpeace arose out of the 1960s and concerns regarding nuclear
testing, whaling, and seal hunts; demonstrating connections between
the peace movement and environmental issues. Many young people today
appear drawn to the focus upon nature and conservation emphasized by
Earth Day and the baby boomers.

Obviously
there was an excess of drugs, violence, and sexuality in the 1960s,
but the clouds of marijuana smoke associated with the era should not
be allowed to obscure the contributions of a generation that sought
to combat racism, war, pollution, sexism, poverty, and materialism.
The reach of the baby boomers often exceeded their grasp, and neither
the new consciousness envisioned by Charles Reich in The
Greening of America
nor the promise of Woodstock ever quite materialized, but there
should be some acknowledgement of the endeavors to create a better
world. We must never forget the sacrifices of the World War II
generation on the beaches of Normandy, but as we also commemorate the
fiftieth anniversary of Freedom Summer, the ultimate price for
freedom paid by Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, as well as others of
the baby boomer generation, should not be forgotten.